Jack & Jill Politics

This is from The New Republic:

Ted Kennedy Redeemed?

Pivoting off the great point Mike’s correspondent made–is it possible that Ted Kennedy (and the rest of the Kennedy clan) actually came through for Obama? If you look at the places Obama made inroads tonight–older voters, white Catholics, Latinos, the white working class–those are all groups with which Kennedy was said to have influence.

I don’t know the answer. (If it’s a yes, it’s a probably a marginal yes. But, as I keep saying, this is a margins game…) But what’s less plausible: expecting Ted Kennedy to pay dividends for you among these voters in a single week (roughly the amount of time between the endorsement and Super Tuesday)? Or expecting the effect to unfold gradually over the course of a couple weeks? Several of the demographics I mentioned are generally slow to assimilate news–and they didn’t know Obama very well to begin with. It wouldn’t shock me if it took them a little while to get up to speed on him, and if the Kennedy endorsement was the beginning of that process.

–Noam Scheiber

Now, I hadn’t thought of this. From where I sit, the Kennedy Endorsements might have done this.

But, I’ll go back to Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Journal Constitution, who pointed out that the purpose of the Kennedy Endorsements was thus:

To STOP, in its tracks, the GHETTOIZATION of Barack Obama.

Stopped it dead in its tracks, giving Obama the breathing room to succeed during Super Tuesday.